PARIS

France will help in forging a partnership between the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the African Medicines Agency (AMA) to enable Africa to handle current and future health crises, the French foreign minister said Friday.

Jean-Yves Le Drian who was one of the speakers on the Paris Peace Forum’s panel, “Team Europe initiative on vaccines, medicines and health technologies,” said France will work to make the partnership between the EMA and the proposed AMA, a reality.

“We want to encourage regional level harmonization for the regulatory framework in Africa. We support the partnership between the EMA and the AMA,” he said.

The African Union (AU) proposed the establishment of the AMA in line with the European agency as a regulatory body to evaluate and supervise medicine on the continent.

Describing the ties between the two continents as “essential,” he assured that the initiative will be the key priority next year for the French presidency at the EU and also a key topic of discussion at the summit between the EU and the AU organized by France.

Highlighting vaccine inequity in the global south, Le Drian said it was crucial for Africa to obtain “sustainable autonomous local production capacities,” especially because some countries were instrumentalizing international cooperation to force vulnerable nations into “dependency.”

France has criticized Russia and China for selling coronavirus vaccines to African countries at higher price rates.

Africa imports 99% of vaccines and 90% of medicine, this must change, he said, adding that the EU was helping with financing vaccines and medical products within the framework of the World Health Organization’s Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator (ACT).

France, too, is supporting the setting up of production hubs by providing €50 million ($57 million) to fund a technology transfer initiative and training highly skilled staff, he noted.

The foreign minister’s statements on accelerating health diplomacy with Africa comes one day after Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari criticized the West for its slow response in supplying COVID-19 vaccines.

Sharing the stage at the Paris Peace Forum with French President Emmanuel Macron and US Vice President Kamala Harris, Buhari highlighted the massive gap in coronavirus vaccines which was undermining Africa’s fight against the virus.

The coordination has to be total and the objective has to be the same, to deliver vaccines to the world,” he said. “Some countries are giving third booster doses when millions across the world are yet to receive a single dose.”